


it's banana bread, bro

by golden_geese



Series: mac and dennis taking care of each other [1]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Allusions to Trauma, Allusions to mental illness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, a little bit, allusions to eating disorders, allusions to various unhealthy relationships, also this isnt super shippy but its a little tiny baby bit shippy, bc i cant help myself lmao, just some introspective ronald mcdonald woobie fluff, oh this? this is nothing, part 2 coming soon!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 03:45:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17113850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_geese/pseuds/golden_geese
Summary: dennis hasn't been eating. mac bakes banana bread.





	it's banana bread, bro

Bananas. Sugar. Vanilla. Eggs. Butter. Flour. Baking powder. A pinch of salt. The clatter of rain against their windows. The cadence of the elderly Armenian couple next door arguing about salsa. The low hum of the TV, which he left on for background noise.

As he measures and pre-heats and stirs and mashes, Mac figures he’s the expert on Dennis. After all, they’ve been best friends for fucking ever. Probably even before they knew each other, Mac figures, they were meant to be best friends. Probably God or Jesus decided a long-ass time ago.

( _We should make banana bread_ , Dennis had suggested one day, infinity in his blue eyes, years and years ago, as the two of them passed a joint back and forth in the Reynolds’ TV room. _My parents are gone. We can make a huge fucking mess if we want to. Let’s make banana bread_. Blazed out of his mind, Mac had just laughed; he didn’t know how to bake fucking banana bread.)

He grabs the stick of butter. Starts rubbing it against the loaf pan he’d borrowed from Dee maybe four years ago and never bothered returning. Not like she bakes anyway. 

He can understand whatever bullshit Charlie is spouting at any given time. He can tell by the look on her face when Dee is about to tell a stupid joke. He knows what his mom’s grunts mean. But, more than any of that, Mac knows Dennis. He could write the guy’s user manual. 

If Dennis is smiling and you can see his gums, it means he’s about to snap. If Dennis stays in the shower long enough for the water to go cold, he’s sad. If Dennis falls asleep in his clothes, it means he got blackout drunk. If Dennis orders a rum and Coke at a bar, he’s feeling frisky. If Dennis takes a few extra seconds to respond when you talk to him, it means he hasn’t been eating that day. If Dennis forgoes responding all together, it likely means he hasn’t been eating for maybe a week.

Mac hums a little as he scrapes all the batter into the buttered pan. Still full of chunks of banana, he notes. Oh well. 

He puts a dish towel over the pan to let it sit for the twenty prescribed minutes. Rinses his hands off; cracks open a beer from the fridge.

The bananas have been pissing Mac off for a few days. They were a bunch of three when Dennis bought them, so fresh they were still a little bit green. One, Dennis had half-eaten. Left the rotting carcass on the counter for two full days before Mac threw it away. And the last two? They’d just been collecting darkness, starting to smell sweet, taking up space. Reminding Mac that if Dennis hadn’t eaten them, he probably hadn’t eaten much at all. So: banana bread.

He knows Dennis better than anyone, sure, but that still isn’t enough sometimes. Because Dennis can never commit to feeling one way. Can never commit to anger or joy or sorrow or loneliness or horniness or frustration; he bops back and forth, one extreme to another, sometimes with no warning. Sometimes he’s the nicest friend Mac can even imagine having-- sometimes he’s going out of his way to give Mac a ride someplace because it’s drizzling, or he’s making Mac breakfast, or he’s smiling and touching Mac’s face all nice and they’re conspiring together like they belong to each other. But other times, Dennis is scratching and shoving and yelling and throwing things. Throwing dishes, throwing empty beer cans, throwing icy glares and weighted words. Sometimes he’s doing all of this in the span of the same evening. Early on, Mac had to learn to adapt quickly.

He takes another sip of beer. Stares at the banana bread batter with the towel over it.

Sometimes Dennis is crying and shaking and remembering and feeling too much. Crawling into Mac’s bed at three in the morning under the pretense of being too cold alone. Looking pale and sallow and empty. Draping himself all over Mac like a cat as they watch their favorite movies for the millionth time.

Really, Mac reasons, you can’t predict what the guy is going to do. Pretty much ever.

But he can tell how Dennis is feeling in one exact moment. And if the feeling is the same for more than a couple days, and it’s a bad one, it isn’t likely he’s going to just snap out of it. So: banana bread.

It’s probably been twenty minutes, he decides. He takes off the hand towel. Shoves the pan into the pre-heated oven. Three hundred and fifty degrees for thirty to thirty five minutes. He sets the timer on the stove and goes to clean up his mess. 

Rinses the mixing bowl. 

One time, he made the mistake of bringing Dennis’ feelings up to Dee. Asking her if she thought the guy was upset. If she noticed how he was sulking more than usual.

“Do you really think that bag of dicks has feelings?” She’d asked, tone so harsh and sharp it effectively shut him up. 

Everyone has feelings. Some people are just worse at it than others. Maybe Dennis is the worst at it out of everyone.

He squirts dish soap into the plastic red bowl. Scrubs at it. This bowl pisses him off. It always has this one little dark speck, engraved into the plastic, that he can never seem to scrub off. No matter how hard he tries.

Dennis loves him, he reasons. Dennis loves him, and he loves Charlie, and he loves Dee, and, probably, he even loves Frank. He may show it in stupid ways or sometimes not at all, but that doesn’t mean shit. Dennis must love Mac-- because he gets jealous. Because he smiles at him. Because they go out for monthly dinners and they have Tuesday movie nights and sometimes they do other nice things together. Because they’re best friends roommates blood brothers co-owners of a bar. 

He goes to dry the bowl with the towel that had been over the banana bread batter. Does a sloppy job. Puts it away in the big dishes and bowls cupboard. 

Dennis probably loves Mac more than anyone else, Mac reasons. Maybe he loves Dee almost as much. But Dee is mean to him; Dee is icy and sarcastic and scathing and bitchy. Maybe they team up a lot, sure, but they treat each other like garbage. And the things they do team up on tend to end up really bad.

(Like, addicted to crack bad. Or screaming at each other at the kitchen table bad, at the very least.)

No, Mac reasons, he and Dennis make the best team ever. Everything they do turns out awesome. They _get_ each other. They almost belong to each other.

He moves on to the rubber spatula. Rinses it thoroughly; scrubs it for maybe two seconds; dries it off.

Dee probably doesn’t love Dennis. Charlie? Probably, Mac figures, he loves Dennis a little bit. Frank could clearly take Dennis or leave him. Would put him through all kinds of terrible shit just for his own gain. Never mind that Dennis is, for all intents and purposes, Frank’s son.

But Mac loves Dennis, he figures. Mac is maybe the only person Dennis loves who loves him back.

Measuring spoons. Measuring cups. Small plastic bowl and fork he’d used to mash the two blackened bananas. He puts the dishes away. Wipes down the counters. 

By the time Dennis wanders into the apartment an hour or so later, the banana bread is out of the oven, sufficiently cooled, and waiting in uneven slices in a tupperware.

From the couch, Mac watches Dennis notice the container on their dining table. Watches him open it. Look inside.

“What’s this?” He finally asks.

“It’s banana bread, bro,” Mac answers, standing up hesitantly. “I made it for you.”

“For me?”

“Yeah, man.”

“...That’s… nice of you.”

“Eat some,” Mac says.

Dennis picks up a piece. Stares hard at it. Stares at it as if he’s waiting for the banana bread to scream at him, to punch him in the throat, to betray him in some unspeakably deep way. It does no such thing. Because it’s just banana bread.

“Okay,” Dennis says eventually. He rips the slice in half. Rips a small piece off the half. Takes a bite of the small piece.

“It’s good, huh?”

He takes a second bite. Chews. Swallows slowly. Nods once. “Yeah.”

“Good,” Mac says, satisfied.

**Author's Note:**

> anon request: "mac and dennis taking care of each other". part 1 of 2. follow me at golden-geese.tumblr.com!


End file.
